MY THOUGHTS ARE stacked like a deck of cards and I have to continually shuffle the top one to the back of the pile.
I can’t obsess about Mom’s surgery on Monday. I can’t think about the possibility of more sexcapades with Finn. I don’t want to shop. I don’t want to surf. I don’t want to eat. And my part-time job is a joke. So, I go to my parents’ house on Saturday afternoon, change into my bathing suit, and head out to the pool to swim until my limbs are like noodles. At least there I can be close by, but not hovering.
Apparently Dad had the same idea. He finishes his lap, surfacing when he sees me and folding his arms at the edge of the pool. Water drips from his salt-and-pepper hair onto his tanned skin and he pushes his goggles onto his forehead before closing his eyes, tilting his face up to the sky. I would do anything to not have to see my father this worried.
I sit down, sliding my feet into the water next to him. We sit in easy silence while he catches his breath.
“Hey, Tulip.”
“Hey, dude.”
I slip the rest of the way into the pool, relishing the mild chill of the unheated water in September.
When I break through the surface, I ask, “You hanging in there?”
He laughs without much humor, stripping his goggles off completely and tossing them onto his towel a few feet away. “Not really.” He’s still breathless. Dad is in unbelievable shape; he must have been swimming like a maniac. “You?”
I shrug. For some reason, I don’t feel like I have a right to be as shaken by all of this as Dad is.
After all, he in particular has always been my most involved parent. Mom’s career exploded when I was only two and tapered just as I was entering college. Dad’s took off my sophomore year of high school, the first year he won an Oscar. He loves us with a ferocity that amazes me, but I know without question that Mom is his sun, moon, and stars.
“Did you go into the office this morning?” I ask.
He smiles, clearly noting my diversionary tactic. “Only for about an hour. Thinking about getting involved with Sal’s next project. It’d keep me home until April, at least.”
Salvatore Marìn is a producer/director who is Dad’s closest friend and most frequent work colleague. I know the question of work has to have been weighing on Dad: how to balance his career while still being there for Mom in every sense of the word. Dad’s never in one place for long, and so I’m sure the idea of having to leave right now, of missing anything with Mom, must be terrifying.
“That sounds ideal,” I say simply, going for light.
“I think you’d like this one.” His smile changes into one I haven’t seen for a while, genuine and mischievous. “It’s about a bunch of guys on a boat.”
“Very funny.” I splash him. I’ve missed his laughter and his easy smiles, so if letting him hassle me about Finn, or any other boy, makes them happen more often, he can do it as much as he wants.
“So what’d you end up doing last night?”
I dunk underwater quickly, slicking my hair back. “Went to Lola’s.”
I can feel him watching me, waiting. He’s used to getting every detail. “And? Was it fun?”
“It was okay,” I hedge and look at him, squinting into the sun. “Funny thing, actually . . . Finn was there.”
His eyebrows slowly inch up. “Finn, huh?”
I’ve always relied on Dad’s brain to help me sort through my day, my frustrations, my adventures.
So of course he knows the PG-rated details of my Vegas trip: We met at a bar, got drunk and married.
After a sharp cut-to-black in the version of the story he got, I told him about how we went together to get the marriage annulled the next afternoon.
But he also knows I flew up to visit Finn for less than a day. So when I mention that he was at the party last night, I’m pretty sure my dad puts two and two together.
“It was a good distraction . . .” I mumble, even more quietly admitting, “not that much happened.”
His eyes dance with restrained teasing. “He’s in town for the grand opening?”
I nod, leaving out the part where it seems Finn is staying for a couple weeks. I can’t decide if I’m excited about this news, or irritated. As if I don’t already have enough to think about, now I’m going to be forced into seeing him every time I want to socialize?
Dad watches me as I doodle in the dry concrete with a wet fingertip. I’ve never had to hide my interest in boys, my distress over girl-dramas, or my fears and anxiety about life from him. Growing up, our deal was that as long as I always came to him first with the big things, he would do his best not to lecture, judge, or go into what mom calls his Protective Latin Rage.
“Distractions are sometimes nice,” he says, watching me. The problem with being raised by such an amazing man is that it’s nearly impossible not to compare every boy I meet to him. Every single one falls short.
I shrug.
“With everything going on in your life, it’s too bad he lives so far away.”
I look over at him. “He’s here for a couple of weeks.”
Dad laughs at my grim expression and lifts himself out of the pool. Water pours off him into puddles at his feet, reflecting a hundred dots of sun on the ground.
“I adore you, my beautiful, fierce girl.” He bends for a towel and dries off his chest and arms as he says, “And I know you. I bet you’re thinking of all the reasons why you shouldn’t spend time with him.”
“Of course I shouldn’t—”
He cuts me off with a hand gently raised in the air. “I know you never let anything come before family; that’s how I raised you. But soon you’ll want to be at every appointment, sitting nearby for every possible second. You’ll be online, reading every detail you can find. You’ll be hovering, offering her food, a sweater, movies, gifts. I’ll be doing the same. And together we will drive your mother crazy.” Crouching down in front of me, he whispers, “Please, Tulip, let yourself be distracted when you can. Have some fun. I envy you.”
OLIVER’S HOUSE IS a tiny, single-story stucco cottage in Pacific Beach, with ocean-breeze-dulled blue paint and faded, chipped red windowsills. The sidewalk out front is cracked and uneven, and the lawn is a mottled calico of yellow, green, and brown. Unlike his glossy new store downtown, this place isn’t much to look at. But I know the area well enough to guess what it cost him and that being able to climb up to his roof at night and see the sunset over the ocean is part of the appeal.
After swimming for a while, I’d gone inside to find Mom and Dad in the living room, cuddled together on the couch and reading their books in easy silence.
I offered to make them lunch. They weren’t hungry. I offered to run some errands. They had nothing for me to do. So I stood, fidgeting at the perimeter of the room until Dad looked up at me and gave me a sad little smile.
Mom will need me, but she doesn’t need me today. She doesn’t need anyone but her guy, and what he needs is to be her entire world right now.
I drove to Oliver’s in a fog, on autopilot, trying not to second-guess what I was going to do. My father was basically telling me to enjoy Finn—though not in those exact words—and why not? It isn’t like Finn and I have misaligned expectations. We’ve spent a combined total of maybe one full day together, and have been naked for most of that. Before this weekend, our most meaningful conversation occurred when I showed up at his house and he told me to help myself to anything in the fridge while he ran out to get condoms.
I smile at the R2-D2 knocker and rap twice at the door with it.
The house inside is silent, and all around me the ocean wind whips past the tall, willowy palms.
Finally, I hear footsteps just in front of the door and it swings open.
Finn pulls a dish towel off his shoulder, using it to dry his hands. He’s shirtless, and his jeans hang low on his hips, revealing the black waistband of his boxers.
“Hey, Ginger Barbie.”
In one heartbeat I’ve gone from relieved anticipation, to hating this moment. I feel vulnerable and on the verge of tears, but there’s nothing particularly sympathetic about Finn. Drunk Finn was an anomaly, all soft expressions and playful. Daylight Finn is efficient and brusque, good for fishing, fucking, and—apparently—washing dishes.
“You know what?” I say, looking at my car parked at the curb. “This was a stupid idea.”
“Wait. You came here to see me, not Oliver?” He takes one step closer.
“Yeah . . .”
“Did you come here to finish what we started last night?”
I turn to leave, having no idea what to say to such a blunt question. I mean, yes, I did come for that.
But it’s bigger than just wanting to fool around: What I want with Finn is the sex that absorbs me and shuts off my brain. I don’t want to play cat-and-mouse, I don’t want to discuss it. I just want to do it.
I can hear the playful mocking in his voice when he calls, “If that’s what you want, you just need to say it, Harlow.”
I stand, facing the street for several deep breaths. A car drifts by, its frame lowered so it almost touches the asphalt, stereo bass blaring, vibrating up through my feet. The car slows, and the man in the passenger seat lifts his chin to me.
“The next young freak I met was Red,” Too $hort raps from the car, his voice distorted through the crappy speakers.
I square my shoulders, staring down the guys as their attention moves past my face to my chest.
“I took her to the house and she gave me head.”
At the lyric, the man in the passenger seat smiles lewdly, raising his eyebrows at the next line as if to ask me whether it’s true, whether I like to freak, and the car stops, idling in the middle of the street as if the driver expects me to jump in and party with them. I want to walk to my car but feel trapped between these guys and the cocky asshole behind me.
Finn steps out of the house, pulling the dishrag off his shoulder as he comes to stand with one shoulder in front of me, and stares down the men in the car.
“The fuck are they looking at?” he growls under his breath.
I no longer care about the guys in the car. I’ve never had a man other than my father take a protective stance around me. The boys I’m used to would just pretend they didn’t see the car at all, or anxiously whisper-hiss that we should get back inside. Beside me, Finn is huge. I’ve never seen his skin in the sun, but the sun has seen him a thousand times. I’m tall, but he’s inches taller, and nearly twice as wide. His chest is tanned and bulky, clear of a single tattoo, but marked with the occasional tiny scar. A snag here, a cut there. He seems larger than life on this street full of salty surfer boys and skinny thugs.
The car accelerates with a rumble, driving off down the street.
“Those assholes wouldn’t know the first thing to do with you,” he says quietly, looking me over as if I’d been handled. And with that look, I see the same expression he gave me last night— possessiveness, interest, hunger—as if I’m not quite what he’d assumed . . . and that, maybe, he liked it.